A stranger lands in Lombard

A wood stork--whose species generally lives in Southern swamps-- confounds experts by somehow making it to a west suburban back yard.

August 31, 2001|By John Chase and Jon Yates, Tribune staff reporters.

The neighbors in Lombard knew the bird living in their back yards for the last three weeks was special. First of all, it looked funny.

Long-legged and gangly, the creature had a pale-yellow beak and a fuzzy, down-covered head and neck. It walked right up to humans like it was looking for food, but turned up its long bill at bread or crackers, preferring scraps of catfish tossed its way.

But every time the homeowners called the local wildlife center about their strange visitor, they were met with skepticism, even disbelief. The only bird that fit their description was a wood stork, found mostly in the swamps of Florida and Georgia and never reported in the Chicago area.

When Sandy Woltman of the Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn finally went over late last week to look for herself, she found exactly what she thought she wouldn't: a juvenile wood stork.

"Holy mother of pearl," Woltman said Thursday, recalling her words when she first spotted the stork, just before it flew into a tree.

The mystery is how the bird, whose species has been on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered list since 1984, wound up in northern Illinois, roughly 1,000 miles from home. The last one sighted in the state was in 1996 in East Alton, just north of St. Louis, according to state wildlife officials.

The stork is being treated for dehydration, weight loss and parasites at the wildlife center, where officials expect it to survive. They hope it will be well enough in a few weeks to be flown to federal wildlife officials in Florida, where it will be released.

Although sick now and still young, the bird should catch up with other wood storks, which stand 40 inches tall, have a 5-foot wingspan and weigh more than 5 pounds when grown.

"The fact that a wood stork was found in this area is very remarkable," said Marcy Rogge, curator at Willowbrook. "No one knows for sure how a bird found only in the wet and swampy habitats of the South found its way to DuPage County."

That hasn't prevented speculation.

Because the stork, which was born this year, is young, Woltman said it could have become separated from its flock and caught up with a group of sandhill cranes flying this way. Others thought it might have hitched a ride on a boat heading up the Mississippi. Or maybe with the drought conditions in the South, it went searching for a better supply of water and fish.

Others said the juvenile stork got caught in a jet stream and simply dropped out of the sky and into Lombard, amid barbecues, lawn furniture and swimming pools.

"Lots of species just show up in odd places, and I don't think anyone really knows how they got there," said Kathy Klimkiewicz, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Bird Banding Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "Only the bird knows."

This year has been particularly popular for wood storks to travel north, she said, with some sightings as far away as British Columbia.

Vern Kleen, an avian ecologist for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, said the three most recent sightings of wood storks in the state have always been between mid-August and early September. Before the sighting in 1996, wood storks also were spotted in 1992 and 1989, both times in the Sanganois Conservation Area in Mason County. In the 19th Century, sightings were more common, with a flock of 50 being spotted near East St. Louis in 1880, according to a published report.

In the most recent sightings in Illinois, the birds have been healthy and officials simply allowed them to fly away. Because wood storks are endangered, they cannot be caught unless they are injured.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed the wood stork on its endangered species list because the bird's feeding habitats--mainly swamplands and marshes in Florida--have decreased. One study cited by the federal government says that about 35 percent of feeding areas in south Florida have disappeared since 1900 because of development.

The bird also has been known to live in Georgia, South Carolina and parts of Latin America.

Willowbrook officials said once the wood stork is healthy, they will place it in a cage on an airplane headed to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service post in Jacksonville, Fla. It likely will be tagged and possibly fitted with a detector so authorities can monitor its progress in the wild.

When Lombard resident Joanne Mueller first saw the wood stork about three weeks ago, she wasn't sure what she was looking at. It was 6 a.m. and she peered out her kitchen window and saw the creature slowly strutting across her backyard. She thought it was a big cat.

"I wasn't wearing my glasses," she said. "And then when I put them on I thought it was a crane."

During its time in Lombard, the stork didn't fly far. Almost every day, it could be found in either the Muellers' yard or the yards on either side of theirs.

Some took to calling the bird "Joe" because it seemed to limp like a neighbor who was recovering from back surgery.

"He was part of the neighborhood, and we liked him," said Rob Wiemer, who lives next door to the Muellers. "He was real friendly. He'd come right up to us looking for food. He was a different bird. But he was still like our pet."